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Nov

19

Part II of two newspaper men and a blogger walk into a bar, aka AAPC Academic Outreach Conference

Filed Under Blogging, Campaigning, Elections, Ohio, Politics | 2 Comments

Part I is here.

My handout is here.

Pictures of the event are here.

I’m still trying to figure out how to turn my Powerpoint into something you can watch.

When last we heard from out intrepid blogger, she had just told the conference organizer that she’d have a Powerpoint presentation to show during her portion of the panel, but, she now readily admits, that was only because the two newspapermen weren’t going to be doing one. Ha.

But, alas, the blogger was a phony and had never done a Powerpoint before.  Never letting a lack of knowledge stop her, she procrastinated until she knew that if she didn’t get her ass in gear, she was going to flop miserably and further destroy whatever modicum of respect she had helped to procure for bloggers (a lowly amount, no doubt, but a modicum nevertheless – and, she would later learn, far more than even she realized).

Frantically, she emailed every blogging guru she’d ever met or read about and inquired, what can I say that no one has said before? What can I say that isn’t the same old “new media v. old media” or “are bloggers journalists” or “is blogging journalism” and so on.

A few took pity on the blogger and provided excellent suggestions.

Which she let sit, for a few days, to, you know, digest and maybe even organize themselves into a Powerpoint presentation.

But when, morning after morning, until about six or seven mornings before the conference, no Powerpoint presentation materialized, she began in earnest to figure out how to do one. She clicked open the Powerpoint tool in her Office Suite and marveled at all the icons.  Then, she screamed up the stairs for her teenage son.

He showed some patience with her but, never liking it when she didn’t know something that she desperately both wanted to know and needed to know, she cut off his tutorial after only a few moments and decided to figure it out by trying.  And trying.  And trying.

Friday night after Shabbat dinner. Saturday morning while everyone was at synagogue. Sunday, during her children’s karate class at the Orthodox shul.

Yes, it took her nearly as long to create a Powerpoint as it took God to create the world. And she even squeezed in a few necessary e-mails to request permission for images she decided to use.

Now, the blogger had sat through many a Powerpoint presentation and did a little Googling on the subject.  She found this post by Seth Godin, and it was good.  She followed his “no more than six words” rule and the picture is worth a thousand words thing and she liked them and used them and liked the results.  But none of her reviewers did (mainly the teenage son).  Her son failed to see the beauty in the less is more approach but she didn’t care.  Her gut said that it was good, and that she had no time left to tinker, for, in reality, she didn’t.

Our blogger arrived in her hotel room on 10/11/07 exactly five minutes before she was to be at the dinner, after which she would be sitting on a panel with two newspaper men.  The talk was titled, “News, Bloggers and New Media in 2008 Ohio.” Flinging off one set of clothing in exchange for another, she stretched on the nude knee-hi’s and high heel straps, grabbed her MacBook and made off with all the cords that could possibly be needed to make the Powerpoint purr.

And purr it did.

To be continued…

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:38 pm November 19th, 2007 in Blogging, Campaigning, Elections, Ohio, Politics | 2 Comments 

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Nov

19

Wide Open afternoon delight

Filed Under Blogging, Media, Wide Open | 4 Comments

You know, I thought this thing was going to taper off, but no.

Background links: WO category on this blog, Poynter, Editor & Publisher, Jay Rosen

New today:

Henery Hawk with an excellent piece deconstructing Dick Feagler’s column.

Chuck Butcher, from Oregon, also with a very accurate and insightful post.

NixGuy on BizzyBlog on Feagler. (Tom – I can’t remember if I linked to that post or not so here’s a bonus in case I did already.)

The Newspaper Association of American is doing a series of posts on the future of newspapers. I learned about it from Mindy McAdams.

Finally, there’s this piece called Newspapers in the Digital Age that included this section:

Profits and democracy

We don’t know when profits are going to return, or how.

We can’t rely on the First Amendment to provide us with a paycheck; the First Amendment is not a financial model. And yet, as newspaper men and women, we return to the articles of democracy to give us a place at the table, and with it the notion that we will find a meal.

Without democracy — which means not just freedom but the robust life in a democratic state — the free press cannot survive, no matter how rich it gets. Indeed, I can imagine a fat and prosperous press without the freedoms of contradiction and accuracy. It would not be a free press, just a profitable one. Its people might think themselves free, yet would not be.

A warning

From “Today’s Word on Journalism … ” comes this trenchant warning, from a small newspaper with very large ideas:

“While the newspaper is expendable, the tradition it represents and the information it supplies are not. The evolution from Gutenberg to Gates may be irreversible, but as new media replace the old ones there’s no official passing of the torch of responsibility, no automatic transfer of the sacred trust the First Amendment placed upon the free press and its proprietors. In fact, the handoff, such as it is, has been fumbled very badly. As newspapers are eviscerated, marginalized and abandoned, they leave a vacuum that nothing and no one is prepared to fill — a crisis on its way to becoming a tragedy. When railroads and riverboats began to go the way of the passenger pigeon, no one was harmed except the work force and a few big investors who had failed to diversify. If professional journalism vanishes along with the newspapers, this thing we call a constitutional democracy becomes a banana republic.”

Now, see. The first thing that comes to my mind is that the First Amendment should never have been reserved or restricted to only certain people in the first place – and I know that there are journalists who say the same. So why is this red herring being pushed?

Well, a lot of us think we know why, but is there more? Or not?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:59 pm November 19th, 2007 in Blogging, Media, Wide Open | 4 Comments 

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Nov

19

State Department blogs, Synablogs, OH education, open records

Filed Under Blogging, Education, Foreign Affairs, Government, Jewish, Judaism, Ohio, Politics, Religion | Comments Off

No time to comment but worth reading:

State Department Tries Blog Diplomacy – I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about the effort before but I can’t come up with the prior post.

Psychohorsey comments on the recent spate of media attention to Governor Strickland’s approach to school funding

Pho with some good perspective on just how different – and not in the “different is good” way – Ohio’s charter school record is.

I serve on the board of my synagogue and cannot quantify what I’ve learned beyond “infinite.” Last week, this study on synagogues and social justice was released. I haven’t read it yet but here’s the basic background:

In May 2007, the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ) convened a consultation on synagogue engagement with social justice. Participants included fifty clergy, lay leaders, activists, and funders from around the United States who are interested and involved in doing justice work within and beyond synagogues.

S3K and JFSJ invited three widely recognized scholars of congregations and social engagement: Professors Nancy Ammerman (Boston University), Mark Chaves (Duke University), and Richard L. Wood (University of New Mexico).

The S3K-JFSJ gathering sought to begin to address these issues. We asked, “How are synagogues engaging in justice work? How can we determine if this engagement is transforming not only the world, but also the synagogues and congregants themselves? And what does that transformation look like?”

This S3K Report, a product of our partnership with JFSJ, offers reflective commentaries about social justice and congregational transformation, as well as a set of questions for use by synagogue leaders who wish to pursue these issues in their home communities.

Good bedtime reading maybe. Here’s the group’s Synablog.

Florida’s governor is injecting more openness into open records law. How does Ohio compare?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:34 am November 19th, 2007 in Blogging, Education, Foreign Affairs, Government, Jewish, Judaism, Ohio, Politics, Religion | Comments Off 

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Nov

19

J-school grad: did editor exploit me w/pubic shaving assignment?

Filed Under Media, Women, Writing | 2 Comments

It’s impossible to really know what was going on here since the Women’s eNews piece is written from the POV of the alleged victim.  And Alecia Warren, a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, isn’t sure if she was in fact a victim at all, a willing victim, or what.

The questions she enumerates in the column are good ones, but I wish there was more reporting available on her allegations and the editor’s side, as well as witnesses.

In any case, is a story that’s focused on how many women shave or don’t shave their pubic hair really what any editor should be giving a j-school intern, or any reporter for that matter?

Makes the stuff some of us bloggers write seem, well, downright like hard news.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:11 am November 19th, 2007 in Media, Women, Writing | 2 Comments 

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Nov

19

When school districts sue parents over blog posts: threat to First Amendment?

Filed Under Blogging, Courts, Education, Parenting | 17 Comments

The distinctively named blog, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, has this post about how a Texas school district threatened to sue a district parent for libel.  Apparently, the parent held her ground and the district is backing off. I recommend reading the post and the links. Here’s the blog in question, Galveston Alliance for Neighborhood Schools.

The Galveston case reminds of this one I wrote about several months ago.  It was based in Long Island.

Then, I read something last night on the Society of Professional Journalists’ website that said that journalists should watch out because if bloggers are getting sued for expressing themselves, when might the same folks come after journalists:

Legal action against bloggers has skyrocketed during the past three years. While some cases have merit, most are lawsuits designed to suppress free speech. Meanwhile, journalists have sought to differentiate themselves from bloggers through self-regulation and legislation. But should they? As new organizations have begun to embrace blogs and user-generated content, the “blogging v. journalism” debate has begun to dissolve, replaced instead by a greater awareness that what threatens bloggers today may well threaten professional journalists tomorrow.

Save the Hilliard Schools and Word of Mouth both frequently write about school districts, with great specificity.  To what standard should they and their commenters be held in terms of defamation law? If blogs are only opinion…?  Or are they?  Or are they only opinion, when they say they are only opinion?

Hint: I do not have an answer for any of these questions – which, of course, is part of the problem for pretty much everyone.

What I do know is that the use of blogs to both spread news of what goes on at a school board meeting (which so few parents attend on any regular basis in most districts across the country) and raise questions about one’s school district is something that seems easy to support and desire.

What protection does such speech deserve? To what extent? The parents aren’t public figures typically, but are the board members? Is the district?

I don’t know – this is deeper into ed law and First Amendment than I currently know.

I’m a champion of the theory that the growth of blogs represents people finding a way to express frustration, frustration that’s always been around but didn’t have as public an outlet as a blog – public in the sense that anyone can find it and read it.

So – once you put those frustrations into writing, in a public place, does the standard change for what you can say, even if the medium is a blog?

I just don’t know.

As the Millard Fillmore blog post ends:

On the one hand, no one likes to be sued for libel. On the other hand, Ms. Tetley [the blogger in question] knows the school district’s leaders are paying attention to what she says.

What’s the moral of this story?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:45 am November 19th, 2007 in Blogging, Courts, Education, Parenting | 17 Comments 

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